The 1981 album David Crosby couldn’t handle making
David Crosby wasn’t going to back down from any kind of musical challenge whenever he made records.
He liked the idea of going in a lot of different directions with his own music, and if the song just so happened to become a hit, that was an extra bonus whenever he started working with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. he felt that a lot of his tunes needed to have a bit more effort out of everyone involved, but he knew when he wasn’t in any good shape to complete some of his best work when he reached the 1980s.
But given how hard he was partying around that time, it was a miracle that Crosby could have even stood up half the time, let alone find the time to sing and play guitar. CSN were suddenly riding high after having yet another hit in the 1980s, but if it weren’t for Neil Young working with Crosby to help him get clean, we probably wouldn’t have had him for as long as we did when he eventually cut out all of the drugs.
That’s not to say that American Dream was an absolute masterpiece by any metric, but there was a lot more for him to work on now that he was clear-headed. And while a lot of great records were lost to time, Crosby remembered feeling guilty that he didn’t deliver everything that he could when working with someone like Phil Collins when he eventually came on for the record But Seriously.
Collins was already a superstar by this point, but Crosby had been keeping tabs on him ever since the days of Genesis. The drummer clearly had the chops that any great rock and roll drummer needed, and since he moonlighted in a fusion band, that was enough to get on Crosby’s radar when he heard records by Brand X. But when Collin first reached out to Crosby to lend a few backing vocals to Face Value, Crosby had to admit that there was no way for him to be in the kind of shape to sing at that point.
According to the drummer, Crosby was far too medicated at the time and was hiding his days away on his boat when he wasn’t making music, saying, “[I] tried to get [him], but he was out on his boat a lot of the time. He was probably out of it, on his boat, is what he was. He said I wouldn’t have liked him then because he wasn’t a very nice person. … What I wanted him to do … was come in and pick out all these strange harmonies – he picks out strange lines that people wouldn’t otherwise think of.”
When Crosby did come back up for air, though, a lot of his collaborations felt like he was making up for lost time whenever he performed. He was still tending to Crosby, Stills and Nash whenever he could, but during his time off, the fact that he could find time to work with Collins, sing backup for David Gilmour on his solo tours, and eventually work with Michael McDonald made him look like he had a whole new lease on life.
That wasn’t even the first time that Collins had worked with one of his legendary friends to get back to their roots. While we’re not really supposed to talk about his disastrous Led Zeppelin show, the fact that he could work his magic for someone like Eric Clapton was proof enough that he was ready to work outside of his comfort zone and adapt to whatever his idols wanted from him.
It may have taken half a decade for Crosby to get out of his stupor, but chances are he was also looking at the chance that he threw away by not working with Collins. He could have had the chance on being on one of the biggest albums of the 1980s, but it’s hard to really understand your opportunities when the drugs are doing the talking for you.
